We had the pleasure to talk to Arco Quist, Senior Business Partner Learning & Development at KPN, about his vision on blended learning, personal development and Bookboon at one of the largest ICT service providers in the Netherlands.

What’s the main focus in terms of L&D for you and KPN this year?

We want our colleagues to develop continually. This doesn’t only apply to professionalism, but also to personal development. Of course it’s important you’re supported in performing your current job effectively, but it’s equally important that you feel sufficiently empowered to be able to choose to do something else, inside or outside of KPN.

This has been at the core of our Learning & Development strategy for quite some time and that hasn’t changed for 2018.

Due to the changing structures within KPN many of our colleagues are starting to work more ‘agile’ and that’s quite different to what they’re used to. This needs to be supported through our training offering. These new organisational structures also demand a different type of leadership.

What’s your view on blended learning?

As many studies suggest, people have preferred learning styles that are very dependent on what it is they want to develop. This can differ completely from topic to topic.

If I have to learn how to cook a certain dish (not that I often do, to be honest) then I like to do this with a book. If the topic is about ‘change’, then I prefer to be in a classroom with a teacher who knows what they’re talking about. But maybe someone else would say that they’d prefer a video of a masterchef explaining the different steps when learning to cook and a good book by a ‘guru’ when it comes to learning more about ‘change’.

The perfect scenario is when you can offer a subject in different ways. This way everyone has a choice. This is also the added value of Bookboon’s offering. Through the eBooks our colleagues can find information about a range of topics. Often this is sufficient, but when they’d like to explore the topic in more depth, they can do this via additional (online) training. For many topics the eBooks are comprehensive enough to meet the learning needs of our staff when it comes to personal development.

Have you used Bookboon yourself?

Yes, of course. I’ve recently listened to an audiobook and read two eBooks. I’m going on holiday soon and have a shortlist of books I’d like to read or listen to.

What do you think of the results of the Bookboon eLibrary?

Since we launched the eLibrary we’ve had more than 20,000 downloads and many of our employees use the library on a regular basis. I initially didn’t have a specific target number in mind but those 20,000 downloads are a great start. We’ve done quite some internal promotion for the eBooks and we already had 10,000 downloads in the first few weeks.

It was funny to see how some people hoarded the books. Some of them immediately downloaded 10 to 30 books. They were probably thinking such a good offer couldn’t last very long!

What are the next steps for your eLibrary?

We’ll start offering the books as part of a specific curriculum. Recently we’ve included various eBooks in our leadership curriculum. We’re looking forward to see how our employees will keep using this very useful collection of eBooks.

Bookboon offers organisations bite-sized eBooks for personal development, written by industry-leading experts, on an incredibly easy-to-use platform that can be installed within minutes. Find out more on bookboonglobal.com.